Watching it go by… 20 September 2009

From a cat blog… and I see the subtitle for the blog is a quote from Wendell Berry:

“To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart.”

That makes sense.

****

What a shock. Spies and counterinsurgency surge in Casablanca. Gambling too… and internet cafes (in Kabul, that is, along with spiraling rents). Don’t mind the roadside bombs.. just the current unpleasantness. We’re not to blame… No.

Reporting from Washington – The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence “surge” that will make its station there among the largest in the agency’s history, U.S. officials say.

When complete, the CIA’s presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.

The influx parallels the U.S. military expansion and comes as the nation’s spy services are under pressure from Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to improve intelligence on the Taliban and find ways to reverse a series of unsettling trends.

Among them are a twofold increase in the number of roadside bombs, a growing sophistication in the kinds of assaults aimed at coalition troops and evidence that a Taliban group has developed an assembly-line approach to grooming suicide bombers and supplying them to other insurgent organizations. snip

And more…

The intelligence expansion goes beyond the CIA to involve every major spy service, officials said, including the National Security Agency, which intercepts calls and e-mails, as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency, which tracks military threats.

And this…

“The Taliban is at its most capable level since 2001, when it was ejected from the country,” said a Defense Department official who has access to classified intelligence estimates. The official, and others, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

A long time ago I read in Harper’s, when the war was less than 2 years old, we had only knocked the Taliban off radio broadcasting for a total of two months.

We went to war? For what?

I think only to kill and maim. Blood and glory. Tally ho. Til we fall flat and the Treasury is beyond empty.

mostly health…. but also race, Carter comment… and Afghanistan. Ths shows are on all at once here, So I watched Steph and will catch MTP on the rerun.. but I dipped into MTP just to check… and it seemed exactly the same.

Walter E. Ellis bribed his way out of a prison halfway house one night in late November 1992 and murdered Irene Smith – the third of at least seven women he killed over 21 years in Milwaukee, prosecutors say.

A couple of weeks later Ellis escaped from the halfway house but was quickly arrested. Already serving time on a drug conviction, Ellis now faced a new charge of escape and a return to prison to do more time.

Ellis offered to make a deal with federal investigators: He would help them bust corrupt halfway house workers who were selling prisoners passes for cash, and they would give him his freedom, court records show.

Federal authorities signed up Ellis as an informant. He walked out of jail three weeks after he was arrested. He was off probation a few months later.

In the next few years, Ellis would kill at least three more women, prosecutors say. He also attacked his girlfriend with a screwdriver and later choked her until she lost consciousness.

The system had another shot at Ellis in 1998 when he attacked a different girlfriend, beating her in the head with a hammer. He got five years in prison.

The law required all prisoners to give DNA to create a database to track down career criminals precisely like Ellis. Again, the accused serial killer beat the system with ease.

At the time, little effort was made to ensure guards were getting DNA from the right prisoner. A fellow prisoner – who already had given his DNA – simply got in line and said he was Ellis. The obvious fraud was spotted by the State Crime Laboratory, but no one bothered to call the prison.

A criminal justice system designed to protect the public and convict the guilty was so full of loopholes that a man who did not graduate from high school was able to game it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Larsen offered Ellis immunity and ultimately his freedom for help on the bribery case. Larsen said prosecutors routinely offer criminals deals to solve other crimes, but they check out their informant to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

“That is surely a tragic situation,” Larsen said. “That is something we all hope and pray doesn’t happen, but it is a fact of the system.”

Yet it happens all the time. The cops show little interest in violent crime, ESPECIALLY when the victims are poor women.

McClatchy. Nobody should be too surprised… and I am pretty sure a lot of teachers are not surprised. He was cagey about merit pay and test scores in the primary AND in the GE. Just not in front of teacher groups (that I caught) …

GOOD LUCK! Clap!

WASHINGTON — When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed merit pay for teachers and lifting the cap on charter schools, the head of the California NAACP stood by his side.

And when the Los Angeles school board voted to approve a plan that could turn over a third of its schools to private operators, Latino members and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa led the charge.

The nation’s public school teachers are feeling the squeeze from all sides these days, and some of the heat is coming from unlikely sources: minorities and longtime Democratic allies.

One of them is President Barack Obama, who is irking teachers by suggesting that student test scores be used to judge the success of educators.

The pressure is particularly intense in California, where U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the state has “lost its way” with public schools.

In an attempt to improve California’s schools, the Obama administration is threatening to withhold federal stimulus money if the Golden State does not rescind a state law that prevents the state from tying test scores to teacher performance.

None of this is exactly what teachers had in mind when they knocked on doors to help elect Obama.

“It takes more than the ability to fill in bubbles to be considered an educated person,” Marty Hittelman, president of the California Federation of Teachers, said in a letter to Duncan. “We thought President Obama understood that.” . . . . . . .

And bridges for sale. yeah I so buy her concern for the children. More like payola in hand to stand with the Socialist Green Nazi.

Alice Huffman, the NAACP’s president since 1999, helped lead fights against school vouchers and merit pay when she worked as an organizer for the CTA for 13 years. Her thinking has definitely changed, which is why she was standing next to a Republican governor last month.

“The only place the NAACP can be is with this governor,” Huffman said. “If the teacher unions put a better proposal on the table, we would stand with them.”

For Huffman, the battle is personal. She said too many inner-city minority children are stuck in failing schools and that immediate and revolutionary changes are needed. . . . .

exactly. The whole game is to bleed the public school system of money… and imo it goes back 50 years… when they started jacking the pay of the too often lousy admin and school hierarchy way up. Bleed bleed bleed. Of course they found a thousand ways to bleed the shcools over the years.

AND Mrs O is a product of a charter school in Chicago. That worked out so well.

I’ve never seen this sort of thing before. Is this some kind of new trend in the Heartland… gluing useless consumer detritus all over one’s vehicle as some form of self-expression? Weird, weird, weird. This country is a lot farther gone than I think we realize…

Sure, Obama has courted the press, and met with a host of Times columnists – Dowd, Rich, Krugman , Brooks and Leonhardt, and likely more (I’m working from memory here) – but Tom Friedman just stepped to the front of the access line with today’s leisurely five-hour round of golf with the president.

The president is a known fan of Friedman, who opened a recent column with a joke he told Obama. The reader-in-chief not only referenced the columnist’s latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded during the campaign, but was then spotted reading it during his Martha’s Vineyard vacation – inspiring the Daily Beast to take a look at just why he’d been reading the same book for so long.

By Michael Calderone 07:41 PM
comments (4) | post comment | permalink

Oh if only Sully were straight, he could be right up there in lights with Friedman.

HA! Well…. it is not as if EITHER he or GWBush had a truly fact checked run OR presidency.

Obama open to newspaper bailout bill

By Michael O’Brien – 09/20/09 04:24 PM ET

The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue.

In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn’t asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, “I don’t know what, in all honesty, government can do about it.”

Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his campaign emerged during the presidential election.

“I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” he said.

The generals are impatient with the White House. General Stanley McChrystal, who took over command of U.S. and NATO troops there in June, passed his strategic assessment seeking more resources and troops up the chain of authority to President Obama on August 30. He and Central Command General David Petraeus want a quick decision from their commander-in-chief. So far, Obama has been unwilling to give them one. Indeed, he said in an interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday:

“I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question. … Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But right now, the question is, the first question is, are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?”

Ummm, hello? They gave him (in your own words) a “strategic assessment”.

The president, one adviser said, is “taking a very deliberate, rational approach, starting at the top” of what he called a “logic chain” that begins with setting objectives, followed by determining a methodology to achieve them. Only when the first two steps are completed, he said, can the third step — a determination of resources — be taken.

“Who’s to say we need more troops?” this official said. “McChrystal is not responsible for assessing how we’re doing against al-Qaeda.”

I saw that piece. We will just up the paramilitaries. They need mild headlines in The Homeland as the state of affairs and the poll numbers are not too hot. Or they ARE too hot. However one looks at it. Plus, you know, cheering crowds in Old and New Europa (free bratwurst and rock bands!)… but we are not growing the coalition of the willing. or whatever we called the dupes we pulled in to Iraq.

All this shit to BailOut Insurance Companies.
Those respected minders of Health, Pension, Life and Annuitiy benefits.
EPople will get it. Frankly, just like the left base is plowed under, that’s where a lot of the angst on the right of center is coming from…Plenty of small biz types – what’s left of them – intuitively know the ass-fucking is coming..Not particularly articiculate – neither they or my way of putting it. So..common ground! Post Partisanship!

I see Spiegel has popped up with two stories on Bagram prison. Geesh, where is the Luv for Ob.

Prisoner Abuse Continues at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan

US President Barack Obama has spoken out against CIA prisoner abuse and wants to close Guantanamo. But he tolerates the existence of Bagram military prison in Afghanistan, where more than 600 people are being held without charge. The facility makes Guantanamo look like a “nice hotel,” in the words of one military prosecutor. . . . . .

SPIEGEL: But there has been an important legal decision stating that detainees in Bagram have the right to legal representation.

Foster: The April 2 decision of Judge John D. Bates, a George Bush appointee, was that our clients were entitled to have their cases reviewed by the court. That was a huge success.

SPIEGEL: Is the Obama administration complying with the Bates decision in providing each detainee a representative?

Foster: Before we could present any evidence or proceed in their cases, the Obama administration appealed the decision to the court of appeals, and is now arguing that it should be overturned. The announcement was intended to generate a positive media spin on the “new” procedures at Bagram, which were announced at this time because the government’s filing in the court of appeals was due the following day. If you look at the actual procedures, you will see that the detainees will not be given any legal representation. Instead, the Department of Defense is saying that it will send non-lawyer “representatives” to question the detainees and look into their cases. Those individuals are not officers of the court, and have no duty of confidentiality or loyalty to the detainee. . . . . . . .

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Israel promised Russia it would not launch an attack on Iran, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview aired on Sunday in which he described such an assault as “the worst thing that can be imagined.”

Israel has hinted it could forcibly deny Iran the means to make an atomic bomb if it refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and has criticized Russia for agreeing to supply to Tehran S-300 anti-aircraft weapons that could complicate an attack.

In an interview with CNN recorded on Tuesday, Medvedev denied Moscow was backing Iran but said it had the right to supply defensive weapons and said sanctions against Tehran should only be used as a last resort.

An attack would lead to “a humanitarian disaster, a vast number of refugees, Iran’s wish to take revenge and not only upon Israel, to be honest, but upon other countries as well,” Medvedev said, according to a Kremlin transcript.

“But my Israeli colleagues told me that they were not planning to act in this way and I trust them.”

Well played, Vlad. “Looked into their eyes”” – ? A Nice touch.
Fuckin Obama…. and Hillary. What a joke, playing at “running” our NeoCon apparatus of State. The deal to forgo next gen Missile shield for Europe no doubt had Russian assurances thta they would not backdoor supply Iran when Israel strikes Iran.. LOL. Fools. Medvedev and Putin are making fools of the Sacred Relationship.. Because in this Liar’s poker, Russia too, – – > like Ob < — would have cited the need to publicly distance themselves from Israel as part of the agreement. No matter.
Because when the shit goes down, Russia will be doing
every god damn thing- whoopsie! –
to supply Iran,
perpetuate the War,
and benefit fromk the windfall that accrue to them because of the crush on the Oil Markets…

And what the fuck are we going to do? Sanction them?
Try and enforce a backdoor deal? LOL. – What?
????- > Pray for our “leaders”, the one time doves ,
trying to fly in now with the Hawks?
With any luck they’ll be plucked from the sky.
What are we gonna do?
Pray that the NeoCon engineers are right?
And flopdruple double down on the moral propoganda?
Or the new MilProp that Israel’s New! Improved War capabilities are, well New!. And Better! — And make it a winner?
Smart Bombing 12.0? ……….12.09?
Good.
Fucking.
Luck.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said on Sunday that U.S. forces should forcibly prevent the Israel Air Force from reaching Iran to strike its nuclear facilities.

In an interview with news Web site the Daily Beast, Brzezinski said that the U.S. forces were “not exactly impotent little babies,” saying that Israel forces have “to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?”

When asked what should the United States do in case Israeli jets fly over Iraq anyway, the former national security advisor said the U

“That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them,” Brzezinski said, adding that Israeli fighters would then “have the choice of turning back or not.”

Brzezinski added that “No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse,” referring to the IDF attack on the U.S.S. Liberty during the Six Day War, which Israel claims was a case of mistaken identity. . . . . . .

Thanks. went a lookin , too.
And I agree with him a 100%.
NTIM. It’s taken on a life of it’s own.
Our money and bloodlusting overlords will proceed as they wish…as they must, from their POV.
They will not give a nickle from their plutocratic coffers. They are entitled. Chosen. And their cheaply had servants will do their bidding.

My take is we did the deal with Russia to LET Israel do the deed.
Of Course the Russians know we’re fools, know we’ll destroy ourselves, so they get the run up in the Oil and Gas markets and can plausibly say they were’nt a party to it.
We’re the only SuperPower™ on Earth, afterall.

They can then plausibly say , that, “like US” they were “hoping” for a peaceful resolution .. in fact followed “our lead”….And just like we’ll deny we’re leading the charge, bankrolling it in full, proceeding with the Cheneyite Agenda…THEY’LL also talk of de-escalation while supplying countervailing assistance to the Iranians .

Well his TV show is boring and dull these days… so… gotta make a living. Or more living… I guess.

And his momma is a preacher woman, it probably felt just like CHURCH.

As the housing market began booming in the mid-2000s, Wells Fargo & Co. teamed up with prominent African American commentator and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and financial author Kelvin Boston, the host of “Moneywise,” a multicultural financial affairs show, to host something called “Wealth Building” seminars in black neighborhoods.

Smiley was the keynote speaker, and the big draw, according to Boston and Keith Corbett, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, who attended two of the seminars. Smiley would charge up the audience — and rattle the Wells Fargo executives in attendance — by launching into a story about how he hated banks, and how they used to refuse to lend him money for his real estate projects in Compton, Calif., and elsewhere. After Hurricane Katrina, Smiley also emphasized the importance of building assets and wealth, saying those who had done so were able to leave New Orleans, while people with nothing had to stay behind, Boston said.

“My spiel was the financial planning process, how you want to be able to save and invest for the future, and to have a plan of action,” Boston said. “Then Tavis talked about his experiences with the banks, and how people should be thinking about some real estate.”

The seminars in some cities drew standing room only crowds, with numerous Wells Fargo representatives on hand, seated at carrels to meet one-on-one with potential borrowers who lined up after the speeches, which were usually held in hotels. The free, day-long events were heavily advertised in the black media, and launched in eight cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, Richmond, Va., and San Francisco.

But what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth was actually just the opposite, according to a little-noticed explanation of the “Wealth Building” seminar strategy, contained in a lawsuit recently filed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. . . . . .

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.

The announcement follows last month’s indictment of Nemazee, head of a private equity firm and an Iranian American Political Action Committee board member, on one count of defrauding Citigroup’s Citibank.

The new indictment adds allegations that he defrauded two other banks, Bank of America and HSBC Bank USA, in a similar fashion by falsifying documents and signatures to purportedly show he had hundreds of millions worth of collateral.

The office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan and the FBI said he used the proceeds of his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, donations to political action committees and charities.

Stealing from the rich to give to the rich. He puts the “hood” in Robin Hood.

Fuckin Hilarious.
Anne Kornblut at WaPo has a piece up,White House Eyes State Races”.
Paterson in New York mentioned? Check.
Deeds in Virgina? Check.
Arlen in Pa? Check.
The sitch in Colorado? Yep.

Not a fuckin peep about Corzine. Fuckin Crickets. LOL.
Where’d he GO?
Had to be a deal with the story.
The latest Quinipiac Poll is due any day.Corzine meanwhile is getting slammed for Hedge Fund investments in the Casinos. That are always claiming losses , going under, and ramming the Unions, then declaring bankrupcy. Gotta love it. The hedgers renegotiating with the banks who underwrite these high flying scams.

Well the Core Dems, the shtupes, will stick with him. Always @40% on one side or other of the clueless partisan divide. So For that reason I bet his numbers don’t fall through the floor, …But he has yet to break 40 in the polls. And clearly the Rahm and David and Ob and the entire DNC has written him off…hoping no one notices. LOL.

Poor clammyc. If only clammy shammallamma ding dong and those 3 other guys he blogs with were better shills.

They’re Looking Ahead™. To NEXT Year’s MoBetta.
Couldn’t be another big shoe is about to drop here?

Picking up on Mcats link to Ben Smith at Politico on Nemazzi ..
Whoa. They’re saying its @ 292 Million that he looted from the banks… CitiCorp provided him the bridge loan when he first got busted, HSBC got stung big…a Robert Rubin / GS Op when you cut through the shell game crap…

well it is glaring as the R are only to happy to link the distinction between Paterson and Corzine. One, Lamaluvbaby is asking to come down from the ledge (feigned concern for Paterson’s well being, hahahahah) the other is sent ice water and sandwiches and huzzahs for the effort on the ledge.

May they all claw each other to death.

I also see references to Paterson being the “only black governor”… so Deval is chopped liver? I guess so!!:cool: … :roll: … :lol: ………………

G20 in Pittsburgh.
PGH Cops tossing houses and vehicles w/o search warrants citing NATIONAL Security. Fuckin dicks. They seem to be focusing on Lawrenceville , the Hill, and the South Side.
Extraordinary geographical advantage IMO for the PTB. The approaches into downtown easily controlled , no working class residential downtown, easily controlled in corridor fashion. . The Hill and the Bluffs seperated by what else – hills – Lawrenceville Bloomfield more than a mile away seperated by the Strip District…

Specter escorting Half of Squirrel Hill to the Club Spots will have no problem tho. It’s such a joke as Pgh is home to perhaps the sharpest Jewish criminals in the world. And home away from Brooklyn home to others. I’m sure Romoff and his Doctor and Lawyer minions will be hosting events courtesy of Organ Transplant Dollars and Insurance Fraud. Not a peep yet about PNC’s insider who cleared 50 million in 2 kited checks to Solomon Dwek, the Rebbes son.. Crickets.
Nobody quite seems to know how that kind of float was ever arranged. And the Media isn’t interested in finding out, either.

So.

At the age of 86, Noam Chomsky remains as active as ever in his work as a world-renowned political dissident and pioneering linguist. He has also opened a new chapter in his life, recently celebrating a one-year anniversary with his new wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, his second marriage. Chomsky discusses the joys of newfound love and why it is a "pri […]

Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Black Lives Matter movement across the United States, calling it a response to the unresolved consequences of slavery and racism dating back hundreds of years. "[Slavery] is a large part of the basis for our wealth and privilege," Chomsky says. "Is there a slave museum in the United States? The first one is just b […]

Following its election in January on a pledge to confront the austerity program that's decimated Greece's economy, the Syriza government has faced a major pushback from international creditors led by Germany. Days after Greece secured a four-month extension to a loan package in exchange for new conditions on its spending, Noam Chomsky says the Euro […]

World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discusses why National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden should be welcomed back to the United States as a hero and why those who authorized the government surveillance he exposed should be on trial, not him. Chomsky also argues that while mass surveillance has been ineffective i […]

The Islamic State might be the best-funded radical Islamist group, perhaps in history, but the coalition air campaign that’s targeting its oil-refining operations and military assets has begun to damage…Click to Continue »

Britain has extradited a Vietnamese national to the United States to face charges that he aided and received military training in Yemen from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Justice…Click to Continue »

At the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference, speakers advanced Iran as an existential threat and sought to downplay differences between Israel and the US while demonstrators were arrested outside

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday that it was negotiating a bad deal with Iran that paved the way to a "nuclear nightmare," drawing a rebuke from President Barack Obama and exposing the depth of a U.S.-Israeli rift.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved full fiscal-year funding for the U.S. domestic security agency on Tuesday, dealing a blow to conservative Republicans who had wanted the bill to include language blocking President Barack Obama's recent executive orders on immigration.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter testified on Tuesday that deep budget cuts could force the Pentagon to put on hold several key weapons development programs, including efforts to build a next-generation fighter and a more efficient aircraft engine.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday the chamber was moving toward debate on a bill that would require President Barack Obama to submit any final nuclear deal with Iran for Congress' approval.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.